Max Dudler

This project to create the new premises for the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development in Invalidenstrasse, Berlin, involved restoring, converting and extending the erstwhile State Geological Institute and Mining Academy, designed by Georg Tiede, and gave rise to a sophisticated architectonic equilibrium between old and new. An ensemble laden with suspense is created by setting the two new buildings at a slight angle to the old building. The architectural idiom and urban design setting for the new buildings along the canal were developed in analogy to Schinkel’s Building Academy by the Spree. The courtyard typology of Tiede’s Mining Academy is transformed into a contemporary vernacular in the architecture deployed for the extensions. Reflecting this, the interior of the new building incorporates reinterpretations of spatial typologies such as the historical atrium.